BUNNY
Luke George and Daniel Kok exploit the physical properties of ropes and knots to unpick the boundaries of desire, trust, consent and communion between artist and audience. In order to unravel shared lines of connection, to suspend tension and to unleash collective desires, Daniel and Luke look to macramé, sailors’ knots, Chinese knots and rope bondage to weave together an interactive experience of collectivity.
“Our investigations into ropes have led us to appreciate the physical properties of ropes, the aesthetics of knots, and the precariousness of the relationship between bodies when connected and bound by rope. More importantly, we were both interested to know how working with a rope could help us rediscover our respective physical practices in dance. As we move with our ropes, we hope to make visible multiple lines of tension and friction, to arrive at a heightened shared experience, and a greater awareness of what it means to be in communion.”
“Bunny” is a nickname given to a person being tied in rope bondage. Conventionally, the bunny is a submissive female of petite stature, while the rigger (the person doing the tying) is usually a dominant heterosexual male. We are not interested in the clichés of BDSM but seek alternative ways of relating and performing by “queering” rope play. In this work, we wish to reconfigure the aesthetics and sexual politics in the power play of bondage. Simply put, we ask ourselves the following question: “What if everyone (in the theatre) is a bunny?”
raised in Tasmania and based in Melbourne, Luke George creates new performance work locally, internationally and interculturally, through experimental creative processes with collaborating artists. George takes daring and at times unorthodox methods to explore new intimacies and connections between audience and performers. His works LIFESIZE (2008), NOW NOW NOW (2010), NOT ABOUT FACE (2013), EROTIC DANCE (2016) and BUNNY (2016) have been presented extensively throughout Australia, and internationally in France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, and the USA. Since receiving his BA from the Victorian College of the Arts, George has collaborated and performed in the works of many acclaimed dance and theatre companies, in music, visual art, live art, and socially engaged projects, and at queer clubs, both in Australia and internationally. George was a recipient of two Melbourne Fringe Awards (1999, 2013), the Asialink Residency (2005), the Russell Page Fellowship (2007), the Greenroom Award for Best Male Dancer (2011), and of various commissions including by the Sydney Opera House (2006), the Keir Foundation (2008), Lucy Guerin Inc (2010), Phantom Limbs (2013), the Chocolate Factory Theater (2014), the Phillip Adams Balletlab (2015) and the Campbelltown Arts Centre (2016). George is also a massage therapist and practitioner of Kinbaku (rope bondage).
is an alumnus of Goldsmiths College (London), where he obtained a BA (Honours) in fine art & critical theory. He also received an MA (Distinction) in Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT, Berlin), and completed the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (APASS) programme in Brussels. In 2008, he received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council (Singapore). His performance works deal with the relational politics in spectatorship and audienceship. Q&A (2009), Planet Romeo (2011), Cheerleader of Europe (2013), ALPHA (2014), PIIGS (2015) and BUNNY (2016) have been presented across Asia, Europe, Australia, and the USA. In 2017, he was commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of the Arts to create MARK, a large-scale outdoor drawing-and-dance performance. As a pole dancer, he won the SG Pole Challenge (2012) and represented Singapore at the International Pole Championships (IPC, 2013). He is currently researching queerness and a notion of trans-individuality through what he dubs The Octopus Practice.
Credits
From 18 years
Remaining tickets for sold-out performances are available at the evening box office.
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